Pioneer Press article also talked about cargill chs joint venture moving to colorado because of the mountains. Wtf? If nothing else it goes to show that logic has nothing to do with corpoate decision making. Next up ADM relocates to Jackson, MS because ceo likes the barbecue.

I guess the next question is why does Minnesota fail to recruit businesses? Reading up elsewhere I think the perception of the twin cities differs from reality. I see lots of comments that chicago has better food and nightlife. That other cities are more accomodating to business. But thats nore fallacy than fact. We're awesome at creating successful companies, but mediocre at keeping or recruiting them. As a transplant from California my family thought I was nuts to relocate. That is until they visited(admittedly in june). My perception amongst 20 somethings is that the twin cities are well respected and desirable but that older people tend to think we're more like Omaha than San Francisco. Do we do a poor job at selling ourselves? I always like to say that the nicest thing about Minnesota is the cold. There are easier places to live but the people who live here WANT to live here.

Konante wrote:The federal government does not and should never have the power to do that. It's up to the people -- in each individual state -- to speak with their vote.

That's like... your opinion, man.

Seriously, though. This game of racing to the bottom with subsidies, "recruiting" businesses, etc is all so frustrating. I'd rather our officials not even spend their time, let alone subsidies through tax dollars, doing this and instead focus on growing businesses from within our existing population and business expertise.

Nick wrote:We really need some federal legislation banning states from poaching businesses from each other with subsidies.

The federal government does not and should never have the power to do that. It's up to the people -- in each individual state -- to speak with their vote.

Two words: Commerce clause

If you're making an academic observation as a point of discussion, okay, sure, they could certainly try that. But if you really think the commerce clause could be stretched (without a successful challenge) to allow the Feds to control how states use state level tax breaks then I quit.

Citizen's United notwithstanding, corporations have no inherent rights -- they exist only through legislation, not through the constitution. In theory, they only exist because society thought that they provided a greater good -- and if society is being extorted by them playing one state (or city, or country) off against the other, then perhaps the legislation that enabled them should go away (or be radically reorganized).

Konante wrote:If you're making an academic observation as a point of discussion, okay, sure, they could certainly try that. But if you really think the commerce clause could be stretched (without a successful challenge) to allow the Feds to control how states use state level tax breaks then I quit.

It certainly wouldn't be the biggest stretch the Feds have made regarding the commerce clause...

I don't think it would be all that uncommon for someone like that (who is maybe from Chicago) To buy a large condo in Chicago for their family and plan to have a smaller one bedroom in whichever city they end up moving their offices too... They might just be excited to get out of Decatur... where it wouldn't also make sense to have a place in Chicago because they are close enough. People with money will spend it and use places as investments and such.

Speaking of nursing our own start ups... there are 6 MN companies on Forbes top 100 small companies list... which is pretty good for a state with 1.5% of the countries population to have 6% of the top 100 most innovative/successful small companies. (one of them is #3 even.)

Surprising absolutely zero people, ADM has picked Chicago. The upside: they're apparently peeved that they didn't get tax breaks to do the thing that they were going to do anyways, so they're looking to move a tech cluster out of state:http://finance-commerce.com/2013/12/adm ... o-chicago/